Visual Network Activity Indicator

If you miss having a visual indication of network activity, here’s an app for you.

Beginning with Windows 95, network activity was indicated as two monitor icons, flashing to indicate sending or receiving network traffic. In the days of dial-up and slow DSL lines, this was often one of your only ways to tell if your connection was working at a glance.

Beginning with Windows Vista, the activity animation was disabled in an effort to reduce distractions. In Windows 7, the option to re-enable the animation was finally removed entirely. Check out the MSDN Channel 9 “But why?” video explanation here.

This tool brings back the activity animation, and further improves with several options that were never available before.

Network Activity Indicator in action.

The app also comes with options to fit the visual style icons you prefer, and fits especially nicely with Windows Vista, 7, 8, and 10’s taskbar themes.